1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for supporting handling related to an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a technique for supporting a photographer's photographing operation, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-236011 discusses a technique of allowing a photographer to manually generate a composition (photography guide) to shoot an image as the photographer wants, and displaying the composition superimposed on a preview image during a photographing operation. According to this technique, it is possible to provide support by the photography guide during the photographing operation so that the image can be captured in a composition close to the photographer's intended composition.
As another related invention, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-27945 discusses a technique of displaying on a photographing apparatus a reference image corresponding to a photographing condition based on an input to the photographing apparatus or a sensor output of, for example, a Global Positioning System (GPS) to use the reference image as a sample composition, thereby supporting a photographing operation.
However, the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-236011 requires the photographer to generate a photography guide according to each photographing condition in advance, if a photographing operation is performed under various kinds of photographing conditions such as landscape, animal, and botanical photographing. Further, this method requires the photographer to carry out an additional process of selecting and setting a photography guide suitable to the current photographing condition.
On the other hand, the method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-27945 can present a reference image suitable to the current photographing condition, but this reference image is an image prepared by a system provider in advance. Therefore, if photographing conditions are the same, a same reference image is uniformly presented to any user. Accordingly, it is impossible to realize presentation of a reference image according to the user's preference and interest. For example, it is impossible to select an image which complies with the user's preference and interest from among a plurality of images having different arrangement (composition) of an object respectively, to support a photographing operation.